The Moment of Truth

The moment of truth has come. Today, we invite all eligible backers to play the alpha version of Pathologic 2.

E-mails containing all necessary instructions should already be in your inboxes. If you haven’t received yours, please let us know through any channel of communication, and we’ll fix it.

The Haruspex needs you.

What is an Alpha

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Playing game alphas sometimes feels more like work than fun. We’ve no doubt you’re all prepared to encounter all kinds of bugs, crashes, hilarious AI glitches and balancing errors. We have, after all, tried to set your expectations by showing our grand collection of ridiculous gifs!

But now you can also help is fix all that. We realize that not everyone has the time to provide extended bug reports, so we did our best to streamline the process for you. You’ll have our eternal gratitude if you find a moment or two to let us know what you think.

Reporting Bugs

Bugs are, first and foremost, technical issues, e.g. visual glitches (a texture didn’t load), AI problems (a character runs in circles), the lack of an object or line of text, a dialogue not launching. If you have general feedback (which you hopefully do), please provide it via the channels described below.

The Channels Described Below

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To find out more about your impressions, we’ve sent the alpha backers a survey. It contains a quiz (that’ll take 5-10 minutes) and an optional open question to spill your heart out.

We’re now also launching Backer Steam Forums and a Discord server if you’d rather provide general feedback there.

About the Keys

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If you haven’t played The Marble Nest, haven’t gotten the Steam key, signed up for the Backer Portal and are generally feeling confused, here’s what you should do:

1. Sign up for the Backer Portal. To register, you’ll need to enter a backer code, that we’d sent you when the Portal was launched. If you’re missing it, please contact support@ice-pick.com.

2. Grab the keys tied to your account

3. Activate them on Steam

4. Dive into the world of painful breakthroughs and intriguing discoveries

5. Let us know what you think

To Steam or not to Steam

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Some of you chose a non-Steam version of Pathologic 2 as a reward. We always keep that in mind. But for technical reasons the alpha and beta will only be available there.

Worry not! Even if you’ve chosen a different platform, you still can try the alpha on Steam. It will not affect your reward. You’ll still get a version of Pathologic 2 of your choice even if you take part in the Steam-based alpha test.

Back to the Future

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As the release date draws closer, we would be much obliged if you could make sure everything is in order. If possible, please find a moment to:

2. Make sure you’ve selected the right rewards (yes, you still can choose different ones for now, but the full freeze is drawing near; we’ll let you know in advance, but perhaps now is a good time to double-check everything)

3. Please add our e-mails (mail@ice-pick.com, support@ice-pick.com, and, if you’re interested, tabletop@ice-pick.com) to your address book. Reward e-mails often contain links, so some services filter them out as spam. We’d like to make sure you don’t miss them!

@Laputan Machine
Didn't know about that. I entered my key there and when I press Check, it says the key is invalid. There is no option in the dropdown menu.
But thanks for the tip. I'll be writing to IPL and see if we can get this fixed.

I'm a little confused. I'm a tier 2 backer who uses Windows and Steam, so I should be able to play the Alpha.
Can't find it though. The Backer Portal now has 2 keys (Pathologic HD and Pathologic 2 Alpha) and I redeemed those keys. I also had the Marble Nest when it came out but that key is no longer displayed (at least not under that name). My Steam library now has "Pathologic 2" which it downloaded, but so far it seems to be the Marble Nest again. Can't spot any differences so far, and I can't redeem the key another time.

If the new key was in an email, I am positive it didn't arrive, and it's not in the spam folder either.

Or does it have a different name in the Steam library? I don't see anything else Pathologic related.

This is going to be overall negative response so ignore me if you can't handle it.

I'm not going to do a paid job by paying for it.
Game testing is a paid job, not a bloody privilege that one should throw money at to be involved in. It's garbage for customers to be be doing your job and the job of testers.

I have no real qualms about getting access to early versions of the game although this day and age it can provide a very unfavorable amount of information to surface before the game is actually complete.
I will wait patiently for the full release.

Please don't do what Compulsion Games did with We Happy Few; Release a broken bug filled mess.

@Ice-Pick Lodge:
Testing and developing only for Windows even when the engine supports other platforms (and they are planned for release!) is the most common mistake. Soon you'll find yourselves using Windows-exclusive plugins ("Through the Woods" or capes in "Pillars of Eternity", someone?) and with the code full of Windows-specific solutions that do not work on other OSes.

By developing solely on Windows you are pretty much asking for trouble and will end up either in need of massive refactoring and another beta-testing (thus, doubling your work instead of cutting as you are hoping) or dropping promised support for other OSes (something along the "With the current sutuation it is not economically feasible and too demanding for us…" lines).

I'm saying this not to annoy you, just to warn. And believe me, I've seen this situation way too often. This does not bode well.

hey I added the code from my backer portal to steam and it says Pathologic 2 is "not available on your current platform." is this alpha just for windows users like the marble nest was? or am I missing something?